We refer to him as John The Baptist but he is more accurately described as The Prophet John. This is what he was—a prophet, the last one sent by God before the end of the Dispensation Of The Law. He stood at the precipice between Law and Grace. His ministry represents the end of an age, the changing of a channel. John baptized Jesus, a wholly symbolic gesture as Jesus had no sin to renounce. Jesus' baptism was an act of obedience to God. The act, marked by John's exclamation, Ecce Agnus Dei! (Behold the Lamb of God) marked the end of John's ministry and the beginning of Christ's. John is one of the most unique and yet most overlooked characters in the bible. Yet, without him, none of Christ's ministry on Earth would have been possible.
Ecce
Agnus Dei
The last prophet sent by God before the end of the old age was a man named John. An odd
character, John, the son of respected Levitical priest and
prophet Zechariah, spent most of his time in the desert wilderness
surrounding Judea and Galilee. His father was favored in God's
eyes, Luke describing both Zachariah and his wife Elisabeth as
being found "blameless" in observing the commandments and
ordinances of the Lord. Zachariah had important duties in the temple, and John himself was of
the High Priest lineage, entitled by birthright to take his seat
among the ruling councils of the religious hierarchy. He could
easily have followed in his father’s footsteps, living a life of
relative safety and comfort, taking a portion of the temple
offerings for himself, marrying and raising a family. John could
have been a typical church pastor. Dental coverage and 401k.
Joining the ranks of so many other church pastors in the
relative safety of conservative religious practice. Making no
waves. Taking no chances.
Instead, John rejected his father’s profession, possibly joining
with a group of extremist evangelical Jews known as the Essenes.
The radical Essenes sect at Qumran placed great emphasis on
purity and purifying rites, and they may have used baptism as
part of their conversion ritual, initiating Gentiles into their
community. John The Baptist may have been raised among the
Qumran Essenes, baptizing Gentiles into the
Jewish faith.
John lived his life in the wilderness surrounding Judea, dressed
in clothes sewn from camel hair and eating grasshoppers and
honey. Today, he would look like a homeless man. Emaciated,
stinky, dirty, unshaven; a wild man out in the weeds. The fool
on the hill. John spent his days proclaiming that the end of the
old order was near, and that the Kingdom of God was soon to
come which, as things turned out, it was. We refer to him as
John The Baptist but he is more accurately described as The
Prophet John. This is what he was—a prophet, thee last one sent
by God before the end of the Dispensation Of The Law. The
resurrection of Jesus Christ ushered in the Novus Ordo
Seclorum— the New Order of The Age— kind of like a new
television season, switching channels from the condemnation of
the dispensation (time period) of the Law to this new thing, the
Dispensation of Grace. You and I exist now in the tail end of
that new dispensation, a time period which is by all evidence
drawing to a close. The Law was about crime and punishment.
Grace is about mercy and forgiveness. The
following dispensation
will be about judgment, our period of amnesty and clemency coming
to a turbulent end.
In those times, the Jewish religious order behaved in many ways
like today’s Church Folk. They were immersed in religiosity, in
their own sense of self-righteousness and entitlement. They'd
built an insular society comprised of their own laws and
customs, even while subsisting within the powerful, vast, pagan
Roman Empire. Jews were permitted a certain level of autonomy
but were still answerable to the state. The Roman politics of the day
seemed to be an official policy of pacification: allow the
Church Folk to practice their religion but don’t allow them to
arm themselves or amass any real political power. This is why,
when the Jewish leaders needed to violate their own Law in order
to perform a political lynching of the man Jesus, they turned to
the state. The could not kill Jesus, a citizen of Rome, on their own without
defiling themselves or risking punishment through the Roman
legal system. Not that these guys cared about defiling
themselves—they did that every day—but that they were concerned
about how things look than how things actually are. They're more
concerned about appearing holy than actually living holy.
Appearance, to the Jewish leadership, was everything. They
needed the state—the Romans—to condemn Jesus so they could claim
bloodless hands. The Jews, who’d normally have not much
to do with the Romans, violated their own Law by taking their
internal religious disagreement with the man Jesus to a worldly
court. This is what our churches do today—claim Christ but sue
each other in worldly courts, violating our own covenants at
will and turning to the world for “justice.” [I Cor. 6]
John The Baptist was of minimal concern to the Jewish
leadership. If anything, I imagine they were grateful Zechariah’s
son had, apparently, lost his mind and would rather spend his
days shouting at passing caravan traffic than to take his
rightful place among them. He posed no threat to them, none to
the state. Let him do whatever he wants.
But, something strange happened: John began to draw a
crowd. Not only were caravans stopping, gathering to hear John’s
preaching, but people within the surrounding towns, Church Folk
these Jewish leaders allegedly ministered to, were beginning to
travel out of town to hear John as well.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that, in the bible days,
traveling outside of your town was a risky thing to do. The few
roads winding through the Galilean wilderness were often
populated by thieves, called Highwaymen, who would routinely
attack travelers, robbing, raping and killing them. For
protection, people tended to travel in groups, the larger the
better. A commitment to journey out of town, presumably taking a
day off from work and requiring virtually your whole family to
travel with you, to hear some crazy itinerant preacher suggested
John’s preaching was so anointed, so powerfully different from
the religion most of these people, most of us, had been settling
for for years.
With the crowds building, John was now becoming a threat. If John was preaching some
radical new religion, was converting people to the idea that the
Messiah’s arrival was imminent, that message undermined the teaching of
the Jewish leaders. What they really cared about was the
potential for John to amass political power, turning these folks
away from them, and putting their fat paychecks at risk. Even
worse, John’s preaching could be received as an act of sedition
against the Roman state, which had allowed these religious fat
cats to operate relatively unharrassed. John was an
uncompromising man of faith. He pulled no punches and he didn’t
play politics with the Word of God. He didn’t condemn sin over
here and soft-pedal it over there. To John, sin was sin, and he
spoke truth to power, something few of us can do.
Even worse, he was right. People hate people who are right.
The Road Less Traveled::
Too many "ministers" just want to be seen on Sunday morning.
People truly called of God will follow wherever He leads, even if that is no place at all.
An Imperfect Ending
There are, to my experience, two kinds of people: those who say
they are anointed and led of God and those who actually are
anointed and led of God. Here’s the difference: people who say
they are anointed and led spend an awful lot of time whining
about not being asked to preach enough and fighting to be seen and
heard. People who actually are called of God just get up in the
morning and do things people don’t understand. They act, for
then most part, anonymously. They are humble and broken. They do
not seek recognition, money or power. Church Folk are usually aware,
on some level, of what these people do but see only a part of it, Like
icebergs, the great, vast majority of what truly anointed people do
remains unseen, unnoticed, unrewarded; hidden well beneath the
surface.
The folks with the opera—and I’ve been guilty of opera
myself—are more invested in self than in what God told them to
do. The folks sitting, year after year, under some pastor, some
bishop, some husband, some wife, some cousin, waiting for
permission to do what God has ordained them to do, are like the
trash-talker. He’s not interested in a fight. He’s a showman. A
clown. A guy who wants to fight you doesn’t come out in
the street and start hollering, putting on a show,
trash-talking. Most guys who do that are trying to work their
nerve up or are really not that invested in trying to fight you.
A guy who wants to fight you just comes up and punches you in
the face. No commentary. No opera.
The religious leaders of the day sent a delegation to go meet
John out in the weeds. The leaders did not go themselves but did
what Church Folk do: assembled a committee. This council of
bishops, in our parlance, sent a group of pastors out to meet
John: find out what was going on, and report back. John was out
there, on his own, unsupervised, stirring up mess. Turning heads
and preaching some new “Good News,” none of which the council
cared about. What they were concerned about was John was drawing
a crowd, a crowd of people that kept these guys in power. They
saw these people not as souls but as numbers. Fake
pastors are always more concerned about numbers, obsessed
with math. Head count equals
power. And they wanted to know exactly what this nut in the
camel suit was saying to "their" folk.
The Jewish leaders violated their own Law by sending this
committee. By lineage and birthright, John was a powerful
priest. He was also a prophet, though the leadership never
considered him such. It was against custom and a violation of
protocol for these high priests to send their guys out to meet
John. You don’t send a bunch of sergeants to reprimand a
general. It was an insult to John’s royal priesthood to send
these guys in the first place, and the Sanhedrin (the Jewish
religious leaders) knew that. But they didn’t want to be seen
meeting with John (obsessed about how things look)
because that would give John that much more credibility.
So, they sent their committee to go visit John, to try and shut
John down. Here are the orders from the head office. And this is
where things got interesting. This week, check out Luke 1-8 and
Mark Chapter 6.
Christopher J. Priest
5 June 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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